I was reflecting recently on a conversation I had with a friend who had worked with me on Howard Dean’s campaign back in the glory days. This friend was lamenting the fact that there were primary challenges to incumbent Democrats. Specifically she was saying that Marcy Winograd, who is challenging Jane Harman in the 36th congressional district primary, was wasting everyone’s time and money. She felt that there are a limited amount of resources to go around, and mounting a challenge in the primary, when polls show you will not be a clear winner, siphons away those resources from the eventual race between the Dem and right-winger. In addition, she explained to me, those resources could be used on other, more safe races between Dems and right-wingers.
This same argument, I might add, was in place until relatively recently even when applied to Dem vs. right-winger races. This doctrine holds that if a potential Dem is behind the right-wingers in the polls, that Dem should not run at all. She should not waste volunteer time doing outreach, not waste print space in the media, nor, God forbid, raise any money and spend it on what conventional wisdom would dictate a lost cause.
The logic, if one presumes to label it as such, is that volunteers could be better used in a campaign where the Dem has a chance of winning. Likewise, presumably the press, if not writing about the doomed challenger, would spend ALL of that now freed up print space (even if it is a local paper one would surmise) on another Dem candidate in a race somewhere else. Likewise, donations that would go to the woman who dared mount a challenge and may not win, will now all go to the race where the outcome is more certain.
Let’s call this idea not mounting a challenge the Carville doctrine. The concept has been around for quite a long time and certainly did not originate with James Carville, but he has been one of its most vocal proponents. Carville, if you remember, was vehemently opposed to Howard Dean’s fifty state strategy. Dean had said that campaign resources should be allocated to all fifty states. The idea being that since Americans are naturally receptive to Democratic ideals, they will eventually gravitate toward Dem positions. As an added bonus you force right-wingers to thin out their limited resources. This works because as I mentioned, Americans fundamentally agree with what the Dems are selling, as opposed to the right wingers who say, for example, that they are fiscally responsible, but when in power spend money like drunken sailors on a crack binge in a house full of high priced hookers.
Even though Dean was thoroughly vindicated with a strategy that was obvious to all progressives ever since there were progressives, there are some, such as my friend, who cling to Carville’s and the establishment Dem’s flawed and obsolete concept of campaign resource allocation. Take volunteer resources. One thing that should be intuitively obvious is that the vast majority of activists volunteer for local campaigns. To the extent they are hard-core politicos, they may volunteer for a senate or presidential race, but for the most part, most volunteers stick to their local congressman, or state and local representatives. Therefore, if there were no local challenger to an incumbent they don’t like, most of these people would not run off to another congressional race fifty miles away to volunteer their time, they would just stay home. Similar logic would apply to the press argument. Contrary to what many politicians would have you believe, the public does not hang on their every word and the press does not wait breathlessly, fingers poised over their keyboards, to publish every little thing politicians say. To claim otherwise is ludicrous. The same thing applies to donations, most of which (since Dean and the advent of serious internet fundraising) are both small, and local. Further, if an incumbent were not sufficiently progressive, that incumbent would get virtually no money from these people. Again, they would just stay home and keep their money to themselves; they would not look around for another campaign far from where they live to donate their hard earned money to.
The downside to the Carville doctrine is that truly progressive legislation never has a chance. Take health care as an example. Most doctors want health care with a public option. Most people, by wide margins in EVERY state, want health care with a public option. Yet, here we are after seventy plus years of wanting universal health care and it’s being held up by a few establishment Dems. How can this be you ask? How can these Dems in name only bow to corporate interests in the face of the clear will of their constituents? Well, let me tell you. Right wing Dems go through a simple calculation. They figure they can defy the electorate almost as much as they want because they know there are a lot of people out there like my friend, who will always trot out the Carville doctrine and start bleating about how a challenge to sellouts like the blue dogs will take away resources from other races and thereby hurt the party. Our only choice being to hold our noses and vote for them regardless because they are marginally better than the republican they will eventually run against. With people like that stifling any meaningful opposition, we get health care that doesn’t help anyone. We get weak-kneed Dems who cave to every whim of the right-wingers no matter how ridiculous. When the right-wingers appointed ideologues to federal courts, establishment Dems refused to filibuster or frankly, object in any way. The result, the Supreme Court voted in George Bush. Need I even mention that Bush and his republicans then went on to come within a hair’s breadth of literally bankrupting the entire planet in record time?? As I write this, this same court voted to allow corporations to give as much money as they want to politicians. Since right-wingers are basically in the pocket of big business, they will get the vast majority of future donations, and this will change the landscape of politics for many years to come.
At some point progressives have to say enough is enough and start supporting candidates for what they stand for rather than because they smell less than their right-winger opposition. When you challenge an incumbent and win, you’ve got a solid ally in congress who will not back down on important progressive issues. Even if you don’t win, you put the incumbent on notice that backsliding on these issues will have real world consequences. Jane Harman, in California’s 36th Congressional district was as establishment Dem as they come. She voted for practically every Bush initiative that he came out with including both wars, the patriot act, and covert surveillance of Americans without a warrant. After the 2006 election when she was challenged by Marcy Winograd, who got a respectable 30% of the vote in the primary, Harman, surprise surprise, was now a big supporter of progressive issues including health care reform. If Ms. Winograd had not gone up against Harman, she would still be a republican light politician and would not have dared defy her handlers in the insurance industry.
So what’s the lesson here? Well, it’s simple. If progressives really want to get their agenda codified into law, they are going to have to play the grown up version of "it’s my ball and if I can’t play I’m taking it and going home". This means not voting for or lending support to, politicians who are Dems in name only. It means actively challenging them in the primaries. Will this throw the election to right-wingers occasionally? Sure will, but the alternative is the status quo, which is unacceptable. Here we are with the biggest margin in congress since the founding of the country and we are still caving to the whim of the minority. The good thing about this strategy is progressives will only have to do it a few times before the establishment Dems realize that we are a force to be reckoned with and one that they betray at peril to their political future.